“Oh, such a delightful plan! It’s the Bensons who are really getting it up—no, I should call it Mr. Ransom’s doing. But we are all to help. It will be no end of fun. I hope there’ll be acting! Anyway we shall have tableaux or something. And a bazaar, oh, yes, and some music. It’s to last for three days—perhaps a week even. And everybody will come. Oh, it will be the greatest fun! And we are to help in everything! We are to be on the Committee. I was never on a Committee before. I do feel so grand!” and Ray danced round her brother and made him a low curtsy, saying: “We shall expect a great deal of patronage from Mr. Cossart, junior, of the Cossart works!” “What’s it all about?” asked North, taking her by the shoulders and giving her a brotherly shake. “I can’t make head or tail of all that gabble. Now, mater, give us a cup of tea, and tell us quietly what all this means. Ray’s off her head, and Raby looks almost as demented. Some tomfoolery in the town, I suppose.” “Well, that is rather a hard name to give it,” said Mrs. Tom with a smile. “It is like this. The new clergyman, Mr. Ransom, has, it seems, very proper and sound ideas about debt upon a church. I am sure your father would approve his views there. He thinks that debt is a wrong thing, and ought never to be contracted, especially over a house dedicated to the worship of God. He is quite shocked that in a prosperous town like this, there should be a heavy debt on the church, and that the mission chapel started two years ago should be almost entirely unpaid for. He spoke very seriously to his churchwardens and some of the leading men in the town, and he has so stirred them up to his view of the case that they are going to make a great effort to wipe out the whole debt immediately.” “Good!” said North nodding his head. “I think that’s a very right way of looking at things. A man who lives in debt is considered to be doing a wrong to his creditors, and why not a church too?—or at least the people who build and use it.”